Cats and Ribbons, Ribbons and Cats
by hashtagartistlife
Summary: Lucy's cat keeps coming home without her ribbon on her neck. Natsu's cat keeps coming home with a ribbon on his neck. They're going to find out just what's going on. [Nalu]


**Inspired by a comic/AU created by n-a-d-h-i-e on tumblr. Once again, ffnet has a vendetta against outside links, so just take my word for it that it was brilliant art and an a++ AU.**

* * *

 **Cats and Ribbons, Ribbons and Cats**

by _hashtagartistlife_

"Happy."

" _mrow."_

"You're wearing… a… a _thing_ again."

"mrooow."

"Where are you _getting_ these from? C'mon, you gotta tell me. I promise I won't be mad."

The blue cat looked at him pointedly and yawned, and Natsu let out a disgusted noise.

"Dammit, Happy! Well, you blew your last chance. Now if you're actually a shapeshifting werecat with a penchant for ribbons instead of just a normal cat and you decide to spring that on me later, you're gonna be _on your own_ , you hear?"

Happy just stared at him disdainfully, and Natsu could have sworn his cat had not been this sassy before the ribbons started turning up. Giving up, he reached out to remove the accessory round his cat's neck – violet today, the fabric looking shiny and expensive – but the feline seemed to quite fancy his new look and pawed him away. Natsu drew his hand back, incensed.

"You _traitor!_ "

Happy just raised his tail and slunk off through the open door. Natsu sighed; he should have known better than to try to tell Happy what to do. Cats, it seemed, were very much different to the lizards he'd owned before; where lizards were content to sit under their sunlamp and doze, cats pretty much did exactly as they pleased. Well, Happy did, at any rate, coming and going with no regard for the hour and always, no matter how many times Natsu removed them, returning with a new silken ribbon tied primly around his neck.

Natsu glanced at his couch, which was by now covered in multicoloured strips of fabric he had taken off his cat's neck. He grunted, then stood up to go rummage for a plastic bag. He'd be damned if he remained ignorant of the source of those ribbons forever. Either his cat was actually a shapeshifter and was tying those ribbons on his own, or he was just extraordinarily good at walking into strips of fabric that tied themselves around his neck of their own accord, or there was someone else involved in this.

He was going to find out who it was.

* * *

"Back again?"

" _mrrow."_

The blue cat purred and arched its back against welcoming hands, and the blonde woman laughed, momentary lines creasing the corners of her pretty eyes. "Had enough of the violet, have you? Why don't we give you a change of outfit, hmm?"

" _mroww."_

Humming slightly, and taking the cat's contented purring as consent, Lucy Heartfilia walked off the find a new ribbon for her most recent companion. She had found the cat (Lucy liked to call her Plue– never mind the fact that that had been her previous _dog'_ s name) scratching at her window one day, drenched through from the impromptu thunderstorm outside. She had dried her off, fed her some of her best tinned tuna, and had even tied a dark blue satin ribbon round her neck as a finishing touch. And from then on the cat was _her_ Plue, even if she did have a tendency to wander off and not come back for days – because she always came back in the end, albeit with the ribbon gone from round her neck. Lucy wondered idly why that was; she assumed that it probably unloosened of its own accord. She didn't mind having to replace the ribbons, but sometimes it happened so frequently that she often wondered if there was more going on than a simple neighbourhood scuffle between cats.

She mentally shrugged. It was none of her business, even if Plue was, for all intents and purposes, her cat now. She knew cats; her mother had owned several throughout the course of her childhood. Cats kept their own company, and it was they that deigned to grace you with their presence, not the other way round.

"Here we go," Lucy crooned, scratching Plue behind her ears as she wound a red ribbon round her neck, "who looks beautiful? _You_ look beautiful. Look at you, all smart and pretty with that red against the blue fur–"

" _HEY!"_

Startling, Lucy peered out her window in the direction of the shout, where she saw a young man with longish, shoulder-length pink hair tied in a half-pony looking up at her with a disgruntled expression on his face. She pointed in her direction with a questioning expression, and the man nodded emphatically, all the while rummaging through his pockets for something. Lucy leaned over her windowsill, curiosity piqued.

Then be brought out a handful of shiny, rainbow strips of fabric, and Lucy blushed bright, _bright_ red.

* * *

The woman at the window – with one hand still idling on _his_ cat's fur, he might add – blushed bright red at the sight of the incriminating bands of colour and sank out of sight behind the windowsill, presumably with embarrassment. Natsu huffed; so _that_ was where the ribbons were coming from. Well, at least now he knew.

"Hey! No! BLONDE! Come back! And you, traitor cat, I'll see you at home! Your weekly tuna allowance is _gone_ , buddy!"

"I'm sorry!" came a wailing voice from somewhere in the vicinity of his cat, "I thought Plue was a stray cat! I'm sorry!"

That brought Natsu up short. "Wait, you named my cat Plue?! His name is _Happy!_ What kind of a name is Plue anyway?"

At this, the woman reappeared at her window, a flush still evident on her cheeks, her blonde hair somewhat dishevelled from having frantic fingers run through them. " _His?_ Plue's a _boy?_ "

A beat of awkward silence followed, in which neither of them quite knew what to say, then–

"Oh my god," the woman muttered, hiding her face in her hands, "this is so embarrassing. Um, shall we talk? You should come up. My name's Lucy Heartfilia."

She took her hands away from her face and picked Happy up, and Happy was, Natsu noted with some surprise, quite content to let himself be held by this rather weird woman. He purred and nuzzled his nose against her chest, and she scratched him behind his ears, still looking down at Natsu with the open invitation written on her face.

She was really rather pretty, Natsu thought absentmindedly.

"…. Yeah, alright. I'm Natsu Dragneel."


End file.
